Meople News: The Glass Twisters’ Guild

Watchtower Games

Over the last weeks we’ve been talking a lot about Fallen, but if you missed it, here are the basics again: Fallen is a two-player dungeon crawler where one player is the Dungeon Lord and the other the invading Hero. Unusually for the genre, the game requires no game board but is played with cards only: Hero and Dungeon Lord have their ability cards and the game progresses along the Story cards with the hero deciding his course of action and the Dungeon Lord putting monsters in his way. Conflict is resolved by dice, but your special ability cards ensure that luck isn’t the only factor. Why do I tell you all that again? Because the Kickstarter project is now in progress.

Steam Park (Image by Cranio Creations)

Cranio Creations

Not really news, more of an assurance that it hasn’t become old yet: Steam Park, the steampunk theme park building game from the creators of Dungeon Fighter (Aureliano Buonfino, Lorenzo Silva, Lorenzo Tucci Sorrentino) with art from Marie Cardouat (Dixit) that was delayed last year is not dead and still very much work in progress. Maybe Essen this year? Here’s another photo showing the custom dice. I hope that last one is to start construction and not related to the picture on the right.

Ludically / Asmodee

All you Dungeon Twister fans can soon get your fix anywhere, at any time, without carrying more than a deck of cards around. Dungeon Twister: The Card Game gives that option to two players while keeping most everything about Dungeon Twister the same: with your team of characters and objects they carry, you descend into the dungeon that will twist and turn as you explore it.

Alderac

This September, when the stars will finally be right for Smash Up: The Obligatory Cthulhu Set, you’ll be able to release the Shoggoth on your victims the other players. Not only is he a beefy minion with his six strength, he also gives the other players the choice of losing a minion or going insane by drawing one of the new Madness cards. Death or insanity – don’t you love Lovecraft?

Minion Games

Minion Games is certainly not afraid to pick controversial themes for their games: in Manhattan Project you were placing workers to build the first nuclear bomb, and in the new Battle Merchants (Gil Hova) you’re going to try and maximize your profits as an arms dealer. Very realistically, even, selling to both sides of the conflict is explicitly encouraged. But that’s where realism ends, your customers are Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and Hobgoblins. The weapons you’re selling have to be crafted first, and upgrading your crafting to improve quality makes sure your weapons don’t break in battle – which would be bad for your bottom line. Here’s one of the merchant characters, no information yet if they will have special abilities or not.

Dice Hate Me Games

I love games. I love coffee. Making a game about coffee, that’s like inventing chocolate-flavoured crack. So you can imagine my reaction when I heard there would be a follow-up to Viva Java. Yeah, exactly: I made coffee. And then I kickstarted Viva Java: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game, also known as Viva Java Dice to its friends. The theme remains unchanged, it’s still about finding the perfect coffee blend. The way to do it is now to roll dice, nudge them a little with your Research Abilities, and create a new blend from the result. A fun and quick gaming experience, not too heavy in the aftertaste, lets call it a game ristretto game, maybe.

Rio Grande Games

Guilds is the next expansion for Donald X. Vaccarino’s Dominion, the eighth if anyone is counting, and possibly the last. But maybe not, only time will tell. The 13 new cards are all about guilds and craftsmen, of course, but some are also about money. For the first time ever, you’ll be able to save money in the shape of coin tokens and use it on a later turn. You’ll also be able pay more than the regular price for some cards and get something extra in return.

Atlas Games

Once upon a time there was a story-telling game where you have to spin a story from all the cards that you were dealt, leading to your ending card, in order to win the game. And the people were playing this game happily for a long time. But the people became restless and started complaining that they always saw the same cards. The people were growing bored. And so Atlas Games, who had created the game in the first place, took pity on the people and made many more cards for them to enjoy the game again. Atlas Games called those new cards Once Upon A Time: Seafaring Tales, and even before the new cards were printed, the people were allowed to see what they would be in the card list.

Feuerland Spiele

German boardgame magazine cliquenabend.de has answered one of the questions moving the gaming world with a video: how will Feuerland Spiele follow up on their immensely successfulTerra Mystica? Since the video is in German, I’ll tell you the answer: with Uwe Rosenberg’s Glass Road, a game about the long tradition of glass production in Bavaria. The basic game mechanic to produce glass and bricks, build buildings to improve your production and cut down forests for firewood is action card selection, but there is a twist to that: each player has an identical set of 15 specialist cards, five of which they pick for their hand each round. When playing a card, you may always use one of its actions, but if no other player has the same card in his hand at the time, you also get the second action. Anticipating your opponents will be even more important than usual in this game, and it does look like Glass Road will be able to maintain the reputation that Terra Mystica built.

Meople by mail

Older Reviews

A train robbery can really ruin your day if you’re one of the passengers. Six bandits trying to rob your train at the same time, but working against each other? With a Marshal thrown in ot fend them off? That’s actually pretty hilarious to watch. And on the gorgeous 3D train of Colt Express, it’s even more fun. All of the chaos, in three dimensions.

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Anyone who grew up with a sibling will know the situation: there is ice cream, or cake, or something to be had, one of you had to split it and the other one would get first pick. As it turns out, that system not only works for ice cream but for exploring space ships as well, because that’s how you get your actions in Andromeda.

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Every night when you go to sleep, your mind gets lost in the Dream Labyrinth. It will wander there for a while and then get back to you in time to wake up. Unless, of course, you are one of the Dreamwalker, for them it’s a fight to return every night, having to find the eight oneiric doors first, chased by nightmares. And they are all alone – or sometimes with one more companion – with the risk of never waking up.

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Simple, abstract games can be so frustrating sometimes. You spend 10 turns, waiting for the right tile, and just after you decide it won’t come up and put something else in it’s place, it comes up. DO you know that feeling? No? Then you don’t know Take it easy.

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For a game as mired in pop culture as Smash Up, it was unavoidable that the internets favorite Old One would have an appearance at some point. But is The Obligatory Chulhu Set as great as the Old One himself, or will it cause your descent into madness?

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The Master Wizards all told you, don’t mess with Baba Yaga. But of course you wouldn’t listen, she is only one witch, what could she possibly do to you. And now you find yourself in the Wilderness, a few days missing from your memory and horribly disfigured, with parts of your body shrunken and grown completely out of proportion. And not in a way that you’d find advantageous. Your only way back to full humanoidity goes through Baba Yaga.

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The Settlers of Catan have come a long way. From their little fictional island all the way to the USA in Trails to Rails and then all the way back to Europe to become Merchants of Europe. It’s been a long, strange trip.